There are two fundamental differences between Western Digital's Scorpio Black and Scorpio Blue drive families - spindle speed and storage capacity. The Scorpio Black drives spin at 7,200 RPM and are currently limited to a maximum capacity of 320 GB. The Scorpio Blue drives, on the other hand, spin at a more sedate 5,400 RPM but have a maximum capacity of 1 TB. The Scorpio Blue drives offer these key features :

Massive capacity - Whether they are in an external drive or a notebook computer, WD Scorpio Blue SATA drives continue to offer the highest capacity for space-hungry operating systems with plenty of room left over for photos, music, and video. A slight increase in overall drive height (750 GB and 1 TB only) has driven storage capacity for 2.5-inch form factor drives upwards to a realm once thought to be impossible.*

Quiet - In a notebook drive, silence is golden. WD's exclusive WhisperDrive™ combines state-of-the-art seeking algorithms to yield one of the quietest 2.5-inch hard drives on the market. These algorithms also optimize the way a drive seeks for data, which significantly improves power consumption. So now silence (and longer battery life) is golden.

Reliable and rugged - WD's ShockGuard technology protects the drive mechanics and platter surfaces from shocks. WD's SecurePark™ parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down, and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface resulting in improved long term reliability due to less head wear, and improved non-operational shock tolerance.

While Western Digital offers Scorpio Blue drives in capacities of 1 TB and 750 GB, these models are 31.5% thicker than standard 2.5" drives and may not fit most notebook storage bays. They also spin at a slower spindle speed of 5,200 RPM. The model with the largest storage capacity, that also conforms to the standard 2.5" form factor, is the 640 GB WD Scorpio Blue hard disk drive, and this is the drive we will be looking into today.

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